ABSTRACT
Two fundamental philosophical problems have been at the centre of the question of being. The first is the problem of human nature – and the associated challenge of human purpose. The other is the ‘perplexing’ problem of how the human mind can gain knowledge of society – and the associated challenge of establishing the criteria for such understanding (Hughes [1958] 2002, 24). These fundamental problems constitute the raisons d’etre of speculative thinking and, therefore, social thought throughout human history. While philosophers for a long time regarded themselves as the most suited to confront these problems, in modern times, both the social sciences and ‘imaginative literature’ – which, as H. Stuart Hughes rightly states, constitute ‘the two aspects of speculative thought that philosophy had once held together’ – have taken on these problems (Hughes [1958] 2002) and continue to suggest crucial and unending answers to the questions raised in, and by, social life.
